1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile communication HLR system, and more particularly to a method of effectively managing application processors in the HLR system.
2. Description of the Conventional Art
Many application processors exist in a mobile communication HLR system and also there are processor management blocks to manage the application processors.
Here, the processor management blocks mainly perform a self-processor control function, an operator terminal control function, and a network management center control function. Specifically, the self-processor control function relates to periodically checking processor health, monitoring a program starting condition by checking a lock file, checking and clearing an overload of a message queue, recovering a processor in an obstruction, and managing an HLR local sub system, the operation terminal control function relates to reporting a processor condition, suspending and starting a processor, and reporting a processor malfunction and recovery, and the network management center control function to reporting a processor condition, and reporting a processor malfunction and recovery.
According to an entire operation of the processor management blocks, for example, the processor management blocks check the existence and validity of the application processors related to the system through an initialization and perform a health check every 2 seconds for the periodical application processor management followed by the overload check, the lock file check and the message management. Here, when there is no response from the corresponding application processors for a predetermined time, it is considered to be a timeout and thus the processor management blocks suspend and then restart the application processors.
However, in the conventional art, an abnormal condition may occur due to various reasons in the mobile communication HLR system. The conventional mobile communication HLR system checks health conditions of the application processors therein and a health check processing unit of the processor management block checks a condition of each application processor to process the abnormal condition.
To check the health of the application processor the health check processing unit outputs a health check message to the application processor and if there is no message from the corresponding application processor responding to the health check message, the health check processing unit considers that the application processor is in the abnormal condition and thus suspends and restarts the application processor to solve the abnormality of the application processor.
However, during which the system is actually operated, the application processor is in an overload or a message processing state, and thus a message may not be temporarily transmitted, but in such a condition the conventional HLR system unnecessarily suspends and restarts the corresponding application processor, which results in an inefficient system management.
Accordingly, the present invention is directed to a processor management method for a mobile communication HLR system which obviates the problems and disadvantages in the conventional art.
An object of the present invention is to provide a processor management method for a mobile communication HLR system that performs an appropriate process by analyzing a state of an application processor in the management of application processors existing in the mobile communication HLR system when there is no response from the application processor with respect to a health check message.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a processor management for a mobile communication HLR system that minimizes a system malfunction time due to an overload, when a state of an application processor is determined to be an overload state, by analyzing the overload to thereby obtain detailed information and performing an overload recovering function corresponding to the obtained information.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a processor management for a mobile communication HLR system that enables another system engaged with the mobile communication HLR system to efficiently manage an overload thereof by transmitting an overload message including overload information.
To achieve these and other advantages and in accordance with the purpose of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described herein, there is provided a processor management method for a home location register (HLR) system which includes transmitting a health check message to a processor and counting a health check count until a response message with respect to the health check message is received, comparing the health check count with a first predetermined time to judge whether the system is in an overload state or not and accordingly performing a processor processing function, comparing the health check count with a second predetermined time to judge whether the system operates or not and accordingly performing a processor processing function, and comparing the health check count with a third predetermined time to judge whether the system is abnormal or not and accordingly performing a processor processing function.